As many of you know, I’ve spent the better part of the last 15 years expanding upon Thom Hartmann’s proposition that ADHD is connected to genes that would have been beneficial for humanity during the time we were hunter-gatherers. My primary focus has leaned more towards using this as a useful conceptual model that can be practically applied to our daily lives, rather than a scientific one.
However, a newly published study by The Royal Society finds attributes connected to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may have helped early hunter-gatherers when foraging for food.
The findings suggest that ADHD behaviors may be a genetic adaptation to certain environments, and may explain why traits such as distractibility and impulsivity may still be with us today in certain neurodivergent individuals.
“If [these traits] were truly negative, then you would think that over evolutionary time, they would be selected against,” says author David Barack, a philosopher and neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Our findings are an initial data point, suggestive of advantages in certain choice contexts.”
“Determining exactly how behaviors associated with ADHD may have been adaptive within past environments is difficult, and these results are compelling in that they demonstrate measurable differences in the foraging strategies employed by individuals with and without ADHD,” says Dan Eisenberg, researcher of human evolutionary biology at the University of Washington.
Read the entire Smithsonian Magazine article here.